The Kirkus Prize is one of the richest literary awards in the world, with a prize of $50,000 bestowed annually to authors of fiction, nonfiction and young readers’ literature. It was created to celebrate the 81 years of discerning, thoughtful criticism Kirkus Reviews has contributed to both the publishing industry and readers at large. Books that earned the Kirkus Star with publication dates between November 1, 2014, and October 31, 2015 (see FAQ for exceptions), are automatically nominated for the 2015 Kirkus Prize, and the winners will be selected on October 15, 2015, by an esteemed panel composed of nationally respected writers and highly regarded booksellers, librarians and Kirkus critics.

KIRKUS REVIEW

Some have said a poet should join astronauts in space so we
could know what it's really like. In Turner, we have sent a poet to war, and we
are much closer to knowing its kaleidoscopic face; as profound sympathy washes
over the reader, so does the war's horror. Alternately stark and surreal,
Turner's chronicle is a textured confluence of the ages, connected by classic
verse, history and arresting metaphor. He surveys a landscape of ghosts from
all of humanity's wars, wraiths who walk the streets and battlefields and rise
like mist from the rivers. Throughout, he is haunted by moral ambiguities. On
the ground, or in dreams hovering above the fray, Turner has the acuity to see
through others' eyes: a bomb maker, quietly assembling “Death's cold and
metallic invitation”; an Iraqi doctor surveying the carnage; a child kissing
her father's cheek; a Turkish cook, dying. The author locates the intoxication
and pathology of war in a wild terrain “where profound questions are given a
violent and inexorable response,” a realm bereft of reason where generation
after generation of soldiers have marched to oblivion or lasting anguish. Why
dida man of such sensitivity and clarity of perception feel
compelled to fight in Iraq, even when he knew it made no sense? Turner doesn't
know, and he dismisses each of the motivations as delusions. But, marinated in
the martial ethic of his father, the author joined the infantry, prepared to be
“low, cold and reptilian” and to live with fear.

It was poetry that offered succor, yet Turner, in this
arresting memoir, still cannot quite answer his overriding question: How does
anyone leave behind a war, its deep reservoirs of trauma and ruined worlds, and
somehow waltz into the rest of his life?

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